is Guglielmo Marconi, a native of Bologna. It was
he who invented the great system of wireless telegraphy which is now
used in nearly all big ships. In 1899 he first succeeded in sending a
message in this way from England to France, and in the next year he
sent one right across the Atlantic. Now ships frequently send a
_Marconigram_ home when they are right in the middle of the ocean; and
many lives have been saved through ships in distress having been able
to send out wireless messages which have brought other vessels
steaming up to their aid. In fact, this invention of Marconi's is,
perhaps, the greatest of all modern inventions, and it is but right
that it should preserve his name.

A different kind of invention has preserved the name of the fourth
Earl of Sandwich, an eighteenth-century nobleman, who was so fond of
card games that he could not bear to leave the card table even to eat
his meals, and so invented what has ever since been called by his
name--the _sandwich_.

Not unlike the origin of the name sandwich is that of _Abernethy_
biscuits, so called after the doctor who invented the recipe for
making them.

It was another doctor, the French physician, Joseph Ignace Guillotin,
who gave his name to the _guillotine_, the terrible knife with which
people were beheaded in thousands during the French Revolution.
Guillotin did not really invent it, nor was he himself guillotined, as
has often been said. The guillotine is supposed to have been invented
long ago in Persia, and was used in the Middle Ages both in Italy and
Germany. The Frenchman whose name it bears was a kindly person, who
merely advised this method of execution at the time of the French
Revolution, because he thought, and rightly, that if people were to be
beheaded at all, it should be done swiftly and not clumsily.

But many things are called by the names of persons who were not
inventors at all. Sometimes a new kind of clothing is called after
some great person just to make it seem distinguished. A _Chesterfield_
overcoat is so called because the tailor who first gave this kind of
coat that name wished to suggest that it had all the elegance
displayed in the clothing of the famous eighteenth-century dandy, the
fourth Earl of Chesterfield. So the well-known _Raglan_ coats and
sleeves took their name first from an English general, Baron Raglan,
who fought in the Crimean War. Both Wellington and Bluecher, the two
generals who fought together and de